Nightcap
by Cloverfield
Summary: Written for and de-anon'd from clampkink. Kurogane and Fai stay in a hotel in Piffle, and Fai's first feeding since things were finally resolved between them turns out better than expected. Postseries. Oneshot. KuroFai.


**DISCLAIMER:** Kurogane, Fai and all of the delicious sexual tension between them remains solely the property of those lovely CLAMP ladies.

**PREFACE: **This is another de-anon for CLAMPkink; I wrote this quite a while ago, for the prompt _Kurogane/Fai; Fai's first post-Celes blood-drinking._ Even though it says post-Celes, I kind of went with post-series; this is set in Piffle, assuming it's the first world they land in after Clow.

* * *

"It's not _that_," and the shake of Fai's head spills damp hair over one shoulder, wet wisps of blonde dripping over his collarbones in a mess of tangles. Blue eyes flash in the steam that hangs thick in the air, white clouds of fog stirring as he sighs, apparently rueful- but the wicked, wicked glow beneath pale eyelashes makes a lie of the demure twist of his mouth as he leans back against the press of Kurogane's palm against his spine. "We're in a _sauna_, Kuro-rin. You'll get dizzy."

The mage is amused, the ninja embarrassed -he hadn't thought of that- and Kurogane grunts, surging forward to hide his face into the curve of Fai's shoulder. The mage grins at the flare of heat across his skin where a flushed cheek presses against his shoulder blade.

"Later, then." It's not a question.

"Yes," says Fai, and lets himself shiver a little as his lover sighs, lips moving against his skin, breath stirring a few sweat-damp strands of hair that cling to the nape of his neck. A heavy hand curls about his hipbone, metal fingertips a sweet bruising pressure as Kurogane's grip tightens. "Oh, _yes_."

* * *

The airconditioning in the hotel is almost too cold, washing goosebumps over flushed skin when they leave the sauna; Kurogane feels the chill like a slap in the face as he walks into their room, but Fai either doesn't notice or simply doesn't care, stretching out loose muscles with a shake of his limbs as he steps past the threshold. Blonde hair, dry now, flies about his face in wispy tangles as the mage leaps for his bed, bouncing on the pristine covers and wrinkling up the sheets- the sight isn't a new one, and Kurogane strongly suspects he does it just to give the cleaning staff something to do every morning.

It's been a while since Fai has slept in his own bed after all.

"When?" he asks, when the mage has grown tired of jumping about and slumps back onto the heaped pillows with a gusty sigh; blue eyes flash in response, flickering gold for a brief moment and catching the dying sunlight that lights up the Piffle skyline in a splash of red and orange. His pulse jumps painfully in his throat as Fai turns lazily towards him.

"So _eager_," comes the whisper, and the husky edge to that voice is just as predatory as cat-slit pupils. Kurogane says nothing, just sits down on the edge of his own bed, willing his new fingers not to twitch and clutch at the blankets as synthetic muscle draws involuntarily tight.

A few minutes pass where Fai just watches him, gaze heavy; shadows flow across the furniture as the sun dips below the horizon, and in the sudden gloom that drifts over the room that gaze burns. "After," starts the blonde, and swallows thickly, audibly so, closing his eyes against the sudden tension that rings between them. "After dinner. You should eat first, and it would be best to say goodnight to the others beforehand." Fai licks his lips, the faintest edge of hunger bleeding into his words. "I don't know what state you'll be in afterwards. It's been some time, Kuro-sama."

_Not since Infinity_, is the unspoken continuation to that statement, and that is true; Kurogane remembers the hot press of the mage's mouth to the seam of metal and flesh, remembers the pink of his tongue stained red as he lapped, catlike, at bloodied fingertips in the time-locked country of Clow… but the last time Fai truly fed was in the gore-streaked chessboard-world, and it had been cold and distant and calculated to hurt- everything the golden gaze that falls on his face is now not.

And the knowledge that it will be _different _now, different without that distance between them strikes Kurogane as he nods, and just like that the pressure eases; Fai smiles again, feline and lazy, stretching his arms above his head to brush fingertips against the cushioned bedhead- but there is still something anticipatory in the curve of his mouth, a promise in the arch of his lithe body across the blankets, and his eyes are heavy-lidded and searching where they fall on Kurogane's face.

"We should dress for dinner. Syaoran said something about meeting up with the little miss president and her groupies, and I'm sure she'll want to see how well your arm is working." Fai's voice is smooth, not nearly so rough about the edges as it was minutes before; it's not yet hard to talk around the need that makes his mouth dry, but it's getting there, and his teeth are sharp even to his own tongue.

Kurogane nods, and Fai forces himself to meet that steady gaze, and his eyes burn under the weight of it.

* * *

Kurogane doesn't like elevators, and Fai watches the slow shift of his shirt across his shoulders as the muscles of that broad back tighten, little by little, with every floor they ascend. At first, Fai thought it was the space that did it, enclosed and tight and breathless- but time and observation has shown that the ninja fears nothing of spaces small, dark or otherwise; it's the _sensation _Kurogane doesn't like, the sick weightless swoop in one's belly as the room shifts that gets to him.

It's not fear. Fai knows what Kurogane smells like when he's afraid, and that's not what spikes his scent now.

"Don't go pressing buttons at random. I don't want this thing to stop at a million different floors before we get to ours."

"There's only seventy-three floors in the building, Kuro-rin," says Fai, amused and letting it show, trailing his fingers over the panel just light enough to leave the touch sensors dark and inert. "You're just as bad as _me_, exaggerating all the time."

"Hn," is the response, and red eyes close as the elevator stills, one large hand curling around the metal railing that rings the room as the machine lurches to a stop; gently enough, Fai supposes, a near-perfect halt, but he can still feel the shudder of air brakes making the ground vibrate beneath his shoes and there is a squeak of protesting brass as Kurogane squeezes a little too tight with his prosthetic hand.

"Just like the knife at dinner," muses Fai, and is scowled at for his comment.

The nerve control on this new arm is finer, more responsive than the last. Kurogane still hasn't got the hang of being gentle with it yet, and if the ninja is a little embarrassed that he leaves dents in the curved surface that fit snugly to the curve of his hand, you wouldn't know to look at his face, impassive and reflected from three different angles by the mirrored walls- though his ears are a little pink and Fai can't help but grin to himself as the doors open with a soft hiss.

Fai takes an open-mouthed breath as the pair of them step into the hallway, cool streams of airconditioning blowing his hair about his face to tickle against his skin as he passes under a vent, and there is a subtle difference in the taste of the air that sighs past his lips. Kurogane pauses briefly to watch him stretch, gaze flicking briefly over the empty hall, closed doors, the elevator foyer, Fai himself; he ignores the teasing smile the mage gifts him, brushes past Fai as he fishes their card key from his pocket and again his scent changes.

More iron now. Less salt. Sharper beneath the vague residue of soap and shampoo, a wisp of cotton from his clothes and the slight savoury traces of the meal he just ate. Copper, like sucking on a coin, rolls across Fai's tongue and beneath the familiar scent of healthy human male, there is something else, something to make hunger cramp in his belly, something _electric._

Prey.

"Your eyes are gold again." Kurogane says the words as much for his own benefit as Fai's, pressing the card to the sensor and waiting for the door to unlock as the mage pads silently across the carpeted hall, even the faint rasp of denim from the too-tight jeans the blonde insisted on wearing to dinner quieted by fluid movement. The hair on the nape of his neck stands alert as Fai draws closer, and the pass of his hand down the line of Kurogane's spine is enough to ghost a chill over his skin despite fingertips never once touching the cloth of his shirt.

"Yes," says Fai, says the vampire, voice soft and calm and a little inhuman. He reaches past Kurogane to push against wooden panelling, sleeve brushing against his bare forearm, and the door swings open at his touch. "Inside would be a good idea now, Kuro-sama."

Kurogane shudders a little. It is not unpleasant.

* * *

The first time Fai fed on him in Infinity had been a disaster, painful and messy and certainly enough to give the blonde reason to hate him more. The second had been easier; Fai hadn't put up as much of a fight that time, but the teeth that sank into torn flesh and ground against the bones of his wrist were still viciously sharp. The third time was the charm. He'd been more organised, pushed harder and Fai had yielded with bad grace but no protest, the movement of his mouth over the proffered wound coolly impersonal and a lot cleaner if still quietly resentful.

It had been like a routine after that: Take sword. Cut wrist, shallowly as possible to avoid significant nerve damage. Watch the blood well up until it drips in thick wet streams into your cupped hand, then hold out your arm. Stare down into the soul of the wretched thing that used to be Fai as he drinks down your strength, drop by stinging drop, burning eyes never leaving your face.

"It was to remind myself," Fai had said later, once everything was over and the pair of them lay tangled in the sheets of a Clow Palace bed, bandaged but not broken and more _alive_than either had ever felt before, "to remind myself how much I hated you. If I watched your face, your disgust, then surely I wouldn't forget that I was supposed to kill you if you got in my way. Surely." Fingertips had skimmed lightly over bandages, then, blue eyes heavy and rueful. "It would have worked, too, if you didn't taste so good."

Fai can laugh about it these days, like he laughs about everything, and even if it's bitter it isn't _fake._

But Fai isn't laughing now, and the tense atmosphere in the room -dim, quiet, second bed still rumpled from where the mage had bounced on it earlier- is heavy with something that feels a lot less like hate and hurt and lot more like hunger, like sex; that same dark need glittering beneath heavy-lidded eyelashes that Kurogane knows so well.

His heartbeat picks up in spite of himself, and the mage turns as he closes the door, fixing him with a slow, considering look. Fai steps further into the room, brushes his hand gently over the base of a lamp; a soft glow flickers into being, their shadows thrown tall and high across the back wall. To his left, the Piffle Skyline; crowded with light and motion even this late, but somehow distant behind cold glass. Behind him, the bed, and Kurogane doesn't miss the way Fai's gaze drifts across the bed covers.

"I'll shut the curtains," says Fai, and his voice is thick, and he has to swallow a few times before he can speak again. "Sit down. Take off your shirt. Get comfortable. This might… take a while."

* * *

"Not the wrist, I should think. Kuro-sama needs to learn to take better care of the limbs he has left, and nerve damage won't be something you thank me for. It's not like you have your left to spare anymore." The palm of Kurogane's artificial hand is rough, synthetic skin shaped with calluses to match the other, and though his fingers are cool, they still curve about Fai's cheek as he presses his face into the touch. Kurogane grunts assent as Fai settles himself into his lap; the ninja is propped up on pillows against the headboard, the dark towel draped across them nearly the same shade as his hair.

"There's other veins." Kurogane's other hand comes to rest on Fai's hip, fingers slipping up and under his shirt, tracing across the waistband of his jeans. "Elbows, knees, thighs."

"Not your elbow," corrects Fai, shifting a little, the edge of his shirt brushing against the ninja's stomach. "If I snap a tendon or sever a nerve, you'll have the same problem."

"Take this off," says Kurogane, ignoring him, and his hand smoothes down from Fai's face to the slope of his shoulder, dragging across white cloth. "It'll stain."

Fai does as he's asked, rocking back a bit; Kurogane pulls his knees up for him to rest his back against as he unbuttons, unnecessarily slow, letting his own fingertips drift across bare skin and enjoying the heat that comes to simmer in the gaze of the man watching him. The room is not nearly so cool now, air-conditioning off, and there is a definite flush of warmth up his chest as he shakes his arms free and lets the shirt fall to the side of the bed. "And here I thought you just wanted me to take my clothes off."

Kurogane says nothing, but doesn't deny it; his hand moves across Fai's back, warm and rough, fingertips tracing the bumps of his spine. Fai watches the small movement travel up his arm, muscle and tendon shifting, eyes trailing over and across to the line of his neck, to the pulse that jumps in Kurogane's throat, and his mouth goes dry with alarming quickness.

"Not your elbow," repeats Fai, voice a rasp. Kurogane sucks in a breath as his pupils slit and sharpen, loose and relaxed posture drawing taut in the space between that breath and the next. "And not your legs. I'm comfortable here," is the next murmur, the mage blinking slowly, sliding forward in Kurogane's lap to rest one hand on his stomach; muscle jumps and twitches beneath his palm.

"_Very _comfortable," and this is a purr, and Fai leans forward, kissing their bodies together; the room is only warm, not hot, and yet sweat beads on his skin as the mage lowers his head, brushing the tip of his tongue against the hollow behind Kurogane's ear. Anticipation tangles in his gut as Fai turns into the motion, sliding his tongue flat and wet down the length of his neck, and Kurogane has to swallow down a groan.

Teeth scrape against his skin. "Here's good," says Fai, breath puffing hot and fast, "You ready?" and this time he can't catch the sound that leaves his throat, something uncontrolled and desperate, and his hips jerk as Fai's lips part and his teeth push _in_, and the sharp, piercing pleasure of it knifes into his blood with the first bite.

* * *

It's not like food. It's _nothing_ like food, nothing like wine or whisky, though every swallowed mouthful burns all the way down to his stomach. It's better. A million times better, and the taste of it, gods, the _taste_ surfs across his tongue like chocolate, like triumph, like drinking down a late summer sunset when the sun paints the horizon in melting streaks of violet and umber and molten gold and brilliant, bloody red; a thousand million colours, every one of them aching and urgent and glorious- but mostly _red_, washing between his teeth and coating his throat in liquid fire.

Kurogane moans, the sound choked and raw and slow to filter through the ringing in Fai's ears; big, strong hands tighten on his hips, pinch his skin between denim and rough fingers, and pull him closer. If Fai couldn't feel that pulse throbbing against his tongue he could certainly feel the heartbeat that races against his chest, but as it is he feels both and he feels caught in a furnace of heat and hunger and need.

His blood aches, twists in his veins even as he drinks deep from his prey, and a fever flushes over his skin as he swallows; the great roaring emptiness inside him quiets finally as Kurogane's breath comes faster with each dragging pull from Fai's mouth on his throat, makes way for something else that scorches his insides and blazes in his belly.

He should stop. He should _stop_. This is enough, he has no wish to hurt his prey; not this man whose blood floods him with strength and heat and the desire to keep living, to protect everything he calls his own. But he doesn't _want_ to, and it's _so good_, and the pressure is building, drawing tight across the small of his back, sparking with every press of skin against skin, pooling hot and aching between his legs. He's dimly aware of moving his hips, cycling them against and away from Kurogane's own; he drags his mouth away with difficulty, teeth parting from taut and bloody flesh with great reluctance, and Kurogane bucks beneath him in protest.

"_Fai_…" His name is a mumbled slur from lips bitten bloody, Kurogane struggling to speak. His eyes are half-closed, burning dark and needy as they catch Fai's own; under that hot gaze the air in his lungs catches, ignites and Fai's chest heaves as he slams their mouths together in a bruising kiss that sends a crackling bolt of pleasure down his spine.

More blood, fizzing on his tongue; he grinds his hips savagely forward, bringing his hands up to cradle Kurogane's face as he pushes his lover down into the pillows, bearing the ninja down into the mattress. His hands slide down to clutch at broad shoulders, right palm slipping on still-bloody skin; Fai moans into his lover's mouth as Kurogane shudders and stiffens, metal and flesh fingers alike digging bruises into Fai's waist as release catches him unawares- and Fai follows him over the edge, eyes scrunched shut against as the pleasure seething in his blood turns supernova, white hot and unstoppable. Slick heat floods his lap as he breaks the kiss with a startled shout and his head tips back, neck arching in a desperate curve as everything flares blindingly white.

* * *

"Fuck," says Kurogane, sometime later; dried blood itches on his neck and cakes the towel spread out beneath him. Fai makes a noise that could be an agreement, draped heavily over his chest and shivering against him. The airconditioning has turned itself on again, somehow, and the sweat drying on his skin raises goosebumps from the chill.

Slowly, his limbs heavy with languor, he lifts a hand to brush blonde hair away from the mage's face; Fai moans softly and rubs his face against Kurogane's shoulder, wet smears of blood from his mouth still hot against his skin. "Nn_nggh_," groans Fai, raising his head- his eyes are dazed and very blue. He shifts experimentally; heat curls lazily into Kurogane's stomach from the movement, even spent as he is, but he's too tired to do anything about it as Fai eases himself off his hips, tipping sideways to flop onto the covers beside him, making a face at the wet stain spreading over his jeans.

"_Ugh_," mumbles Fai, and Kurogane concurs. It's probably going to be a while before he can stand up, but as soon as he can, he's definitely having another shower. "Okay," says Fai at length, speaking slowly and carefully like someone drunk. "New rule. Next time, we do this _naked_." A slow smile, lazy and deliciously post-coital, eases over Fai's mouth, and even though his lips and chin are stained red, it's still wonderful to see. There's no guilt in his eyes now, not like in Infinity, and a warm kind of glow settles in Kurogane's chest as Fai curls into his side.

"Yeah. Okay." Things are going to be just fine from now on.

* * *

**ENDNOTE:** I have something of a... _thing_ for vampirism. In case it wasn't obvious. *cough* I have actually written a sequel in several parts to this as part of a meme-fill; it ended up much longer (and a lot smuttier) than the original fic! I'm hoping to post it up here as well sometime in the near future. Thanks for reading!


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